Video images are extremely attractive and effective in conveying information to people. This is due in large part to the exceptional capability of human eyes to process a viewed image. A person can view a very brief video clip, yet still obtain and retain important information from the clip. This is clearly demonstrated by the prevalence of television commercials and music videos comprising very short “cuts” or video clips.
In recent years, devices for recording video streams have become increasingly commonplace. In particular, camera phones and digital cameras have exploded in popularity, creating an enormous multimedia recorder base. Additionally, Internet-connected personal computers and other communication-capable devices make interactive media stream consumption possible, and the storage capability in these devices has become very inexpensive.
At the same time that the ability to record video streams has progressed among users, “collaborative editing” has also become more commonplace. In collaborative editing, multiple users are capable of working together in order to edit a video stream as necessary or desired. For example, multiple users can collaborate through different devices to cut, combine, or otherwise modify video streams for future viewing. However, even though these types of edits can be made to video streams by multiple users simultaneously, these edits are of the “active” variety, i.e., through the use of multimedia editing programs or similar software, where the purpose of the activity is to edit the stream. Other systems comprise “unorganized” collaborative editing, where the individual users are not aware of others who may also be influencing the editing process. In such systems, the resulting content may be the result of a “behaviour analysis” process, wherein the actions of the individual users is used as an input.